Social Network Society's Toe Jam

I have told many stories about my everyday adventures and as most of you may have realized there is never a dull moment - the truth is there is always a dull moment, I just happen to be able to take the bore out of any story. I guess you can call it the ‘gift of spicing’. But, anyway that is not what I want to blog about. The other day as I was reading Frantz Fanons wretched of the earth I came across a line, which to me was very profound. He said: “The Native is an oppressed person whose permanent dream is to become the persecutor.” Now I would like my readers to bear in mind that I am about to bastardise this great psychologist and writers quote by adding y own new age social network analysis that might leave my blog hungrier for followers than it currently is.

As we have all seen and heard the twitter phenomenon has hit the world by storm (ok not that big a storm, but its doing well). I always hear the same argument between twitter and Facebook users: twitter people are smarter than facebook people and twitter people are narcissistic etc, etc. However, we cannot prove any of this as there are no IQ tests taken when you join a social network _ all we know is that you can read, write and upload pictures, which more or less is what is required. At times facebook people tend to use the social network as their diaries, but at the end of the day it is their page, so they should be allowed to say whatever they would like, I find the people that live to critisise what the others do to be the worst, they get on my nerves because they play the role of holier than thou or rather in this day and age better off than you (truth be told I find these critics rather pretentious and they try too hard to smarter and so above it all).

Actually that reminds me, I was at a function, ‘do ‘ or thing not too long ago where a friend of mine sat bored and going through her facebook on her mobile. I am not quiet sure what she saw on Facebook but, minutes later whatever she saw became a conference call that demanded her to head outside and call a few people. I always wonder, do we really care that much about what people do? Do you care so much that you want to spend your hard earned money and call people to discuss what you saw on another person’s wall? If that is the case I would rather be considered narcissistic, what other people post bothers me very little unless I think it is funny, informative or they are talking directly to me. Which may be the reason why I found the links on twitter informative and the one liners people threw around worthy of my incredibly toothy grin.

Twitter was, for the longest time in my case a place that, I could read short version of what people had to say and get links to read the papers … oh and make friends with some really cool people that share the same interests as me such as books, animals, art, fashion and the list goes on. The more I got into the network the more I began to take interest in people and things, so much so that I have met some amazing and intelligent people in real life. For me, it was an amazing experience - it was networking without the clutter.

Lately however, which actually brings me to the quote I have been dying to share I have noticed that (I cant call them haters) the somewhat angered individuals are now rearing their heads on twitter. Now this is a different crowd all together, these kids or grown ups or whatever they are out for blood, they are renowned for their ability to attack people that are doing better than they are, start or perpetuate what they call ‘twitter wars’ and start trending topics that are dumber than my pet pig wearing a tutu.

Just the other day I was going through my twitter home page when I was met with retweets from the fuelers applauding a marauding fool as he critisised an artist for putting together his work. All of a sudden these people are experts on all subject matters, yet they are societies toe jam. It is however ok not to like something, but these people build their social network popularity by attacking, fueling or defecating on peoples work or quality of life. When I was reading through Frantz Fanons Wretched of the earth and came across a quote that said: “The Native is an oppressed person whose permanent dream is to become the persecutor.” I actually took that line out of the context of the book and looked at our dear friends that gain popularity from making people look bad and for me that one quote seemed to summarise what these people are (I told you I was about to bastardise the quote).

Thing is, its ok not to like something, we all have different tastes. If you don’t like it leave it alone. But what I have read from these marauders is that, they dream of being someone special, someone big or well, known, so when someone takes some of their work put it out there (hard work mind you) they jump on a band wagon to deface it so they can be popularity points without lifting a finger, they just spew hatred and venom. Their spirits are so oppressed by their talentless mundane lives that they devise a way to be the suppressors. It has become a disgusting social network trend where people who live to shit on people who work hard… Are you that depraved?

I have one question for them though… when will these marauders ever show us something worth appraisal or even the odd green eye? And oh I am not just talking about fame, education counts here also.